


Cry Wolf

by flyingisland



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Flustered Hunk, Heith Secret Santa 2018, Love at First Sight, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-25 00:41:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17111183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingisland/pseuds/flyingisland
Summary: Hunk never thought that he’d fall in love, and he definitely never expected to be led straight to it by a trespassing dog that just can’t manage to go to the bathroom in its own yard.





	Cry Wolf

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blackberry_peachx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackberry_peachx/gifts).



> A special thanks to [epiproctan](http://epiproctan.tumblr.com) for taking the time to beta this for me!

For the most part, Hunk has always considered himself to be just a little bit too rooted in realism to ever fall in love.

He likes the idea of it, the concept of love as a theory or a plotline in some of his favorite books and movies. He likes the fantastical notion of meeting someone by chance at a coffee shop or a museum, sharing an umbrella under the spray of unexpected rain. He likes the idea of holding mitted hands in the cold winter or kissing as the clock strikes midnight on new year’s morning. But he’s always imagined that things like love at first sight, or settling down with “the one”, or anything related to Hollywood’s fanciful notion of romance exists _only_ in television and movies with no bleed-over into real life. He’s never thought, even for a moment, that love could present itself just as amazing and life-changing and all-consuming as it always seems to happen in fiction.

It’s never bothered him much, not really. It doesn’t mean that he’s never had a crush, or attempted to date anyone. He’s experienced the normal ups and downs of relationships through middle school and high school—turned down a modest amount of date proposals and been rejected in turn. He thinks that attraction and fleeting crushes are normal. They’re natural and organic and so human that he’d never imagine denying himself these experiences, but love itself is nothing but a chemical reaction in the brain. It isn’t fate or angels or some nosy deity vying for two or more people to finally come together in endless euphoria. It isn’t as though a God, or a spirit, or some omnipresent entity could ever find the time to care enough about his life in particular, to entertain the notion of helping him find his “one”.

It doesn’t come up a lot in casual conversation. Pidge, ever the realist as well, seems to understand his state of mind despite the fact that she’s decided to take it to the extreme. She isn’t interested in romance. She doesn’t see the point in becoming close to another person in more ways than just platonic. If Hunk mentions a crush, she’s quick to tell him which parts of the brain are fooling him into “breeding”, as she so tactlessly calls it, but she seems to understand, at the very least, that Hunk isn’t totally above allowing his more carnal instincts to “fool” him from time to time anyway. And the ever-romantic Lance is perpetually chasing the skirt of the prettiest girls in the room, which is fine with Hunk, and Pidge, as the two of them become so engrossed in their scientific debates that they can’t be bothered to wonder where he’s wandered off to.

Lance believes wholeheartedly in love, and Hunk has never been cruel enough to disillusion him. Or to argue at all, really, when the idea of love itself is enough to compel Lance through even the darkest of emotional moments. Hunk doesn’t really understand how a belief in something can carry a person through hardship. He doesn’t know how the sole possibility of something good happening in the future could ever make all of the bad things feel less horrible in the moment. But he admires that about Lance, admires the fact that he can still find the strength to believe in anything after all that they’ve been through.

Through their friendship, for the first time in his life, he wonders if perhaps he’s wrong about the whole thing. If maybe, possibly, there might be a lot more to all of this hubbub about love.

And that leads him where he is today, traversing with Lance to his family’s vacation home in the Rockies. Pidge has been complaining about the cold since they left home, has been bickering with Lance about the wifi connection in the mountains since he proposed the winter vacation over two months ago. But she came anyway, which maybe Lance doesn’t understand well enough to appreciate. The two of them made a point of tagging along, despite how outdoorsy neither of them are. Despite the fact that Lance advertised this place like the extrovert that he is—the small town filled with friendly faces. The jogging trails and the campsites. The close-knit community where neighbors will visit at random, at any point in the day.

The lakes, frozen over, he’s told them, are a popular spot for kids to ice skate. He tells Hunk that they need to try it, but Hunk isn’t sure if he trusts his rudimentary skating skills on precariously frozen water. He hurts himself just fine in the rinks, after all.

But Lance had told Hunk something that had intrigued him. He’d pulled him aside, as though to spare him from Pidge’s prying, judgemental earshot. An arm slung over his shoulder, a hand cupped between his mouth and Hunk’s ear, he’d muttered, “There are so many fine chicks up there too, dude. I don’t know what it is, maybe the higher altitude? But I’m telling you, Hunk, love was made for the Rockies! If you come with me, I swear you’ll see what I mean once you get there.”

Hunk knows that he would have come anyway, just because he has a lot of trouble saying no to Lance. He knows that Pidge herself wouldn’t have needed much prompting beyond the original request either and that the three of them wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they were expected to spend even a few days away from each other. They’ve been friends for too long by now. They’re inseparable in the very worst meaning of the word.

Co-dependent, maybe, but Hunk has been Lance’s best friend since the two of them were in diapers. And Pidge, coming into their lives after she moved next door to Lance in second grade, has woven herself so deeply into their stories that neither of them can imagine spending too much time without her.

And maybe this is why he’d felt compelled to come here. Maybe, as he steps from the car and his boots crunch in the thick, freshly-fallen snow, this idea that his two best friends will be here to back him up no matter what fills him with a confidence that he doesn’t usually feel.

This will be fun, even without a stable internet connection. Just a cabin, his friends, and a week alone to spend doing whatever comes his way. He’s already curious about what sorts of ingredients they might be able to find at the grocery store housed at the base of the mountain. He’s already wondering if he might be able to fix the snowmobile that Lance warned them has been defunct since two winters ago.

School and finals and the coming Spring semester are nothing but a distant memory. They’re barely a thought in his mind as he breathes in the fresher, colder air and admires the sparkling snow-capped _everything_ around him.

The cabin ahead is quaint but well-maintained. Lance had mentioned that a neighbor worked as their groundskeeper. That his family had told the guy that they’d be coming, so he made sure to stock the fridge and turn on the heat. Freshly chopped wood sits in a disrupted patch of snow just outside of the front door. Thick bales of smoke billow out of the chimney into the scraps of open blue sky between the trees.

Pidge and Lance are still bickering as they both climb out as well. Pidge is dragging a wheeled suitcase that catches unceremoniously in the snow and the rocks and dirt and dead grass beneath. She’s complaining about “roughing it” which Lance laughs at loudly. He asks her if she’d ever been camping, and she scoffs at the mere idea of it. And while Hunk knows that Lance’s idea of being one with the wilderness is watching cartoons in his parent’s camper while eating nothing but s’mores and campfire hotdogs for a few days, he isn’t particularly interested in inserting himself in the middle of their back and forth.

His own luggage is a simple, weighty duffle bag that he’d stuffed with a week’s worth of clothes and toiletries, his phone charger, and some standard first aid. Lance had reassured them that the cabin was fully stocked, just in case, but his mother had always told him that he could never be too careful, never too prepared. He might as well bring his own alcohol wipes and bandages just in case, and he’s never been the sort of person to feel as though overplanning could be a bad idea.

He carries this easily on his shoulder, offering quietly to take Pidge’s luggage as well, as she continues to grapple with it. She lets him, but in the same prickly manner that she might let him off the hook after a big argument, and he smiles despite this, knowing that she appreciates it, even if she wouldn’t ever dare show it.

The walk from car to cabin takes a few minutes. The snow around them falls into the open edge of his boots, wetting his socks and making him eager to change into his pajamas and enjoy a nice, calm evening after driving the ten hours to get here.

Lance heads their group, as Pidge lingers close by Hunk’s side. She’s still complaining quietly to herself, a nervous tic more than anything, Hunk thinks. He knows that she’s perfectly capable of keeping herself busy even without an internet connection, but he isn’t sure if she’d have as much fun here if she couldn’t give Lance a hard time about something. Their routine is predictable at this point, but they never seem to grow tired of it. And Hunk wonders if that will be how they are forever—the three of them, playing their roles. Bickering and joking but still loving each other deep down. And he wonders if Lance was right before, when he told him that love itself was made for this snowy oasis. If Hunk’s worldview will be shaken, or if Lance, once again, was just saying the most charming thing that he could think of to get him interested in playing whichever role he’s already assigned to him.

There’s no way of knowing, for now. So instead of worrying about it, instead of tirelessly skimming through all of the possibilities that excite him and get his hopes up far more than he should be letting them, he steps inside of the cabin, kicking the snow from his boots onto the welcome mat and immediately feeling far more comfortable in the wake of the warmth that greets them.

The first room in the cabin is a small living room. The couches and coffee table wrap around a medium-sized flat screen television that, for now, is turned off. Everything is clean and appears to be fairly new. It’s different than Hunk was imagining of a vacation spot that Lance’s family only visits once or twice per year. It looks just as Lance had assured him, even if he hadn’t believed him at the time. The groundskeeper has been taking good care of this place—keeping it clean, dry, and warmed frequently enough that no musty smells have been allowed to culminate in the air. It doesn’t feel dirty or not lived in. It feels just as comfortable and loved as Lance’s home, back home, and just as atmospheric and welcoming as any tastefully decorated scene from a magazine or book.

Pidge has already shed her coat, scarf, and boots, and she’s throwing herself, exhausted, on one of the plush, overstuffed couches surrounding the TV. She groans loudly, fretting about her sore back. Lance fumbles with his own bag as he heads towards the narrow staircase, turning halfway to send Hunk a small, sly grin as he tells him that the bedrooms are upstairs.

“There are only two of them,” he tells Hunk, “so it looks like we’re gonna be bunkmates.”

Hunk doesn’t offer much in the way of a response, but he does take a moment to set both of the bags in his hands down gently before leaning down to start untying his boots. He breathes in deeply, slowly becoming acclimated to the smell of burning firewood and the aged logs that make up the house. It’s pine-scented in here, among the campfire smells that he’s less than accustomed to. It’s overwhelmingly nostalgic in the same way that it’s unfamiliar—as though he should recognize these sensations from all of the cartoons that he’s watched in his youth. As though he feels at home already in a situation that he’s never experienced in the flesh, if only because he’s seen and read about it so many times before.

The quintessential “friend-cation” as Lance has started calling it, is something that he’s heard about more than he’s seen it actually happen. Lance’s family’s wealth allows for such things to become a reality, sure, but he has a sneaking suspicion that he’s going to experience something this week that not many people have the fortune to.

It’s an interesting, unexpected privilege to find himself on the receiving end of. This definitely isn’t the kind of situation that he’d ever expect to be in, even after knowing Lance for so long. And he tells himself that he’s going to enjoy this if only to pay Lance back for allowing him to come along. He’s going to be a good sport this week, and even if, in the end, he discovers that “roughing it” isn’t for him, at least this can hopefully become an interesting story to tell someone else someday.

For now, he leaves his boots by the door, and he sheds his coat before slinging it over the back of the couch where Pidge is currently rolled over on her belly, fiddling with her phone. He pushes his duffle bag over his shoulder, grabbing her luggage by the handle and toting the two of them up the narrow staircase behind Lance.

It’s a tight fit, with both bags scraping against the walls as he ascends, but he thankfully manages to get to the top without knocking any of the family photos off of the wall. He notices that these, too, have been recently dusted. Everything around here looks entirely too clean to have been left alone here since last winter. He can’t help but wonder just how much money Lance’s family pays the groundskeeper to keep everything in such a pristine state. Especially when, more likely than not, they might not even notice if he simply waited until he warned him that they’d be visiting and made a day of tidying things up. Hunk isn’t completely sure if rich people care about that sort of thing or not, but Lance’s parents have always been nice to him. He can’t imagine anyone in Lance’s family throwing a fit over a few dusty picture frames, but the groundskeeper has still made a point of keeping them polished anyway.

Lance is inside of the bedroom just to the left of the stairs when Hunk makes it to the top. Across the cramped hallway, there’s a bathroom, and next to that, another, smaller bedroom. The door to that one is cracked open, and Hunk can see through the slit that it’s been fitted with a bunk bed that’s draped in lacy, pastel pink blankets. The rugs and curtains match and the walls are a paler shade. And the room where Lance is currently unpacking is blue, instead. But fitted, as well, with a matching, ornate, seemingly handmade bunk bed.

Lance has claimed the bottom, it seems, and Hunk sighs at the mere idea of having to climb up and down the ladder every time that he has to go to the bathroom. But he doesn’t bother arguing about it since he knows that Lance always wins their arguments anyway. And he knows that, if he causes a fuss, he can’t exactly trust Lance not to kick the bottom of the mattress late in the night, if only to enact some semblance of revenge.

Instead, he drops the duffle bag by the door, pausing only to offer Lance a weak smile in response to his own toothy grin, before making his way across the short distance of the hall to drop Pidge’s bag in her room. When he steps back into the bedroom, he watches Lance folding his clothes and placing them neatly into the top drawer of the dresser, just beside the bed. He allows his mind to wander for a moment, his gaze trailing over to the window through the slits of the drawn curtains, noticing the snow that’s just started to fall, the slow descent of the sun as afternoon melts into the evening. He thinks about this next week, about what might happen here. He wonders how eagerly Lance will introduce himself and Pidge to this final piece of his life that he’s previously never had the opportunity to share with them, and he wonders if he’s truly strong enough to be a good sport through all of it.

He draws in a deep breath, crossing his arms over his chest as he leans against the doorframe.

“Hey, Lance.” His voice is quiet, timid, almost, and while Lance doesn’t look up from his task, he does offer a small hum of admission. “Thanks, man. For… letting us come out here with you. I’ve never been to the mountains before. It’s… cool. This is gonna be a lot of fun.”

Lance’s smile makes the embarrassment worth it. The cheeky grin, the pink-dusted cheeks.

Hunk believes in platonic love, at least. In this moment, with Lance, he understands perfectly well that his heart is overfilled with adoration for his very best friend.

 

* * *

 

Hunk is as quiet as he can manage to be as he slides down the ladder from the top bunk to the floor, tip-toeing across the aged floorboards in pursuit of a cold glass of water to remedy his dry throat. It’s the middle of the night now, and across the hall, he can hear Pidge snoring loudly, even through her closed door. Lance, on the bottom bunk, is quieter, but Hunk can tell by the absence of questions or complaints about being jostled that he’s also deeply asleep. And the world outside is silent and dark. The only light that filters through the curtain is the blue hue of the moon through the trees and the single, orange glow of the porch light that Lance had kept on in hopes of scaring away wild animals.

Hunk hadn’t felt particularly safe when Lance had assured them that any bears probably wouldn’t try to break through the door. And he definitely hadn’t been reassured when Pidge had mentioned that perhaps they might smell the leftovers from dinner in the trash, and they might try pawing at the windows to get in. Hunk’s general opinion about wild animals has always been that they’re fine from afar. He’s never felt the need to see a bear or a shark or a wolf up close and personal, and for the most part, he shapes his life around putting himself in the sorts of situations where he might encounter one as fleetingly as possible.

He’s never swam too far out in the ocean. He’s never hiked alone in deep, hard to navigate woods. And the mere idea now that a bear might come to visit them in the middle of the night is more terrifying than any campfire story that Lance could have to hold him to freak him out, even though neither him or Pidge had any ulterior motives when they’d mentioned it. But Hunk feels rattled enough by the notion that he suspects that the bad dream that he woke from might have been a big, fuzzy thing with sharp claws and hungry teeth. He feels as though he might really only be going downstairs to get some water so he can peer through the windows and make sure that his dream was truly only a dream. He isn’t in danger now. There’s nothing for him to be worried about.

He reaches the bottom of the stairs without event, but his heart still thrums restlessly in his chest. His stomach is in knots now, his palms clammy enough that they slip against the railing, and his toes bump clumsily against each new step, nearly tripping him three times before he reaches the landing. But he makes it there in one piece. Thankfully, without any furry, clawed hands reaching through the gaps and grasping him around the ankles.

And first, once he regains his bearings and catches his breath, he checks outside through the front door. No beady eyes gaze back at him, no matter how thunderously his pulse is pounding in his chest. It’s hard to see much of anything through the glare of the porch light, but he feels calmer, gradually, when he doesn’t see an immediate threat trying to break through the door. So he continues from the stairs, through the darkened living room, into the small kitchen. He fumbles blindly and uncertain through foreign kitchen cabinets until he finds the glasses. And he breathes in deeply once again, scrubbing a hand over his face before reaching down to turn on the cold water, and watching it run for a few short seconds before sticking the glass underneath the spray of it.

He turns off the tap. He takes another few short breaths to further calm himself. And he drinks, finally, reassuring himself that he’s just being silly, it’s just late at night in an unfamiliar place. It’s normal to feel antsy here, and Pidge and Lance were right earlier—it is very unlikely that a bear or a stray dog or any other animal could actually break into the cabin. Especially if the groundskeeper hasn’t had any trouble with the wildlife at any other point during the year before they came here.

Hunk had asked a lot of questions about him earlier, too. When Lance had mentioned the guy briefly, Hunk had imagined a gnarled, hulking man. He’d pictured the sort of mountain-dwelling hick that might terrorize an innocent group of college kids in the movies. He’d thought about a more unassuming image of an older, farmer type as well, if only to calm his rampant and unkind imagination, but he couldn’t help but feel a little unsettled, thinking that they weren’t the only people who had access to the cabin. If the groundskeeper wanted, after all, he could come inside at any time. And if he spends the majority of his days tending to the land, Hunk can’t imagine that any of them, as young city slickers, would be very capable of overpowering him if push came to shove.

But Lance had laughed when he’d mentioned it. He’d waved a hand in the air dramatically as though to dismiss the entire idea of it from the conversation.

“He’s like, our age, I think,” Lance had said then, “He’s shorter than I am. His dad used to be our neighbor, but he died a long time ago. So my parents pay him to take care of things while we’re gone because they feel bad for him. He’s kind of a snob and a total weirdo, but I’m pretty sure you could take him on if you needed to defend us, big guy.”

But Hunk had been far from convinced. He’d latched onto Lance’s admission that the guy was, in fact, “a total weirdo”, and he’d wondered how well Lance could _really_ know a person who he only saw fleetingly every winter. The groundskeeper could be a complete sicko, and Lance would have no way of knowing! He could keep old photographs that he’d pilfered from the cabin littering his walls, scratching out their eyes or using them to throw darts at! He could despise them, secretly, and maybe even believe that he rightfully owned the cabin that he spent so much time taking care of. And maybe that chip on his shoulder would only amplify once he witnessed a group of unworthy teenagers taking refuge in the home that he so covets. Maybe whatever issue Lance has with him will be exacerbated when the groundskeeper sees that Lance had the gall to bring friends here, without the parents who he’s really indebted to.

His thoughts are wild with a flurry of different terrifying situations. He runs through the plotline of pretty much every scary movie that he’s ever seen. He’s so spooked at this point that even the wind blowing through the trees startles him. He turns around to register the cause of that noise. He tells himself that through the kitchen window, he’s just as likely to see an angry groundskeeper peering at him through the glass with a giant ax in his hand as nothing but wind shuddering through the trees. But he witnesses, instead, something somehow even more terrifying than he could have ever expected.

In the dim puddle of the moon, standing still and seemingly watching him through the window, is the large black shadowed body of what, at first, looks to Hunk to be a dog. But it’s entirely too big to even be a german shepherd. And it’s far too fluffy to be a great dane. Its thick legs are shoved down in the snow that also clings and shimmers in the moonlight against its dense coat. The breeze jostles its fur, as well, in a way that’s entirely too organic for Hunk’s frantic nerves to write off as just a shadow from the house. With the way that it continues standing still, statuesque and unnaturally unmoving, it almost seems to be nothing but a mirage or a hallucination fueled by Hunk’s exhausted horror, until Hunk shoves closer to the window to get a better look, and it finally jerks back, just a little.

Its sharp, arrow-headed ears stick up, pointing towards him. Its long, powerful legs shove it further forward in the snow. It’s close enough to the window now that it could probably reach him before he managed to run very far, if only the cabin walls weren’t between them. It watches him for another long moment before finally, after what feels like a hundred heart attacks later, it turns its head and slowly trots away.

A wolf, Hunk realizes. While he was sleeping soundly, innocently, naively believing that they could be safe in this wilderness, a wolf was poking around outside.

And it saw him. It knows that he’s here.

He’s too terrified right now to even consider how silly all of this really is.

He doesn’t sleep well throughout the night, and in the morning, when Lance and Pidge rise, innocently and unknowing of what unfolded while they were slumbering soundly, only when Lance shakes him awake and begs for him to make breakfast does Hunk find the strength to get out of bed.

And it’s calming, he has to admit, to cook. He makes bacon and eggs the first morning. He fries everything in the same grease, in the same big, heavy pan that’s so well taken care of that it’s practically brand new. He marvels at the fact that the eggs and bacon aren’t packaged as they would be from a grocery store. Lance casually tells him that the groundskeeper keeps a small farm of his own, and he probably donated some of his goods just to fill the fridge. He laughs when he says that his parents will pay him back for them anyway, that it doesn’t get more organic than a mountain-dwelling hick raising his own small selection of animals and preparing all of the meat and other goods in his barn. He says that the guy seems handy enough, that he’s smart enough to give them clean and well-prepared food to use. That he’s trustworthy if not just a little bit aloof, and that if Hunk wants, later on, he can call the guy and ask him if he has any deer meat that they can eat too.

Hunk can’t stop himself in time, when he turns to slide Pidge’s eggs onto her plate, from giving Lance a long, worried look, and blurting out, “Do you think he could take out a wolf? Like, does he have weapons and stuff to kill one? Do you think he’s hunted wolves before?”

Lance’s expression is perplexed, to say the least. He’s caught between confusion and laughter, as Pidge pulls away with her plateful and grabs the fresh toast that’s just popped up from the toaster. Finally, Lance offers him a small, bemused scoff, holding out his own plate in one hand as the other rests lazily on his hip.

“Are you afraid that we’re gonna have a little red riding hood situation here?” He asks, “Like, you’re gonna be out in the forest collecting berries or something and our sexy groundskeeper is gonna have to pry you from the mouth of the big bad wolf?”

Hunk shudders, fearful in place of the embarrassment that he suspects that Lance actually intended to instill in him. He flips the bacon, prodding at the corners of the sizzling eggs as the whites slowly begin to gain color.

“Don’t talk like that, man! I saw a wolf last night and I—I don’t know! Like, if something happened, does he know what to do? Do we even have enough reception to call an ambulance? Where’s the closest hospital anyway, like, would they even be able to get up here before—before we _died_?!”

Pidge, from her new spot at the kitchen table, is watching all of this unfold as though it isn’t phasing her at all. Lance is still having a lot of trouble not grinning at him, still masking a stray laugh or two as he listens to Hunk ramble on. And Hunk knows that seeing one wolf all alone in the middle of the night through the window of a tightly-locked cabin is definitely nothing to write home about. He understands that, for the most part, they’ve found themselves tucked into the center of a vast forest of snowy wilderness. Seeing animals isn’t something that surprises him, but the idea of finding himself face-to-face with one of the bigger, more bloodthirsty ones without a plan of action is where things start to feel a little hairier for him. He just wants to know what to do in the event that the wolf returns. And he wants to know if he sees it again at night if maybe they should warn the groundskeeper so he can keep a closer eye on his farm animals.

Lance sighs, finally, waving his plate in the air in front of him as Hunk flips the eggs, jittery and unhappy as no one seems to understand the seriousness of this predicament.

“I’ll call the groundskeeper later, okay? I’ll ask him if he’s seen the wolf or whatever around. And I’ll see if he has like, some life hacks or something to keep it away. Would that make you feel better?”

Hunk drags in a deep breath. The eggs are done, so he motions for Lance to hold out his plate, and to stop flinging it around so recklessly. As he’s sliding the eggs, then the bacon from the pan, he nods once, slowly. He bites his lip, thinking about how he’d felt pinned under the intensity of that shadowed stare last night. And he isn’t sure how he’d react if he were to meet something like that outside, without the safety of the cabin between himself and that murderous monster. Fight, or flight, or freeze, he knows that in any outcome, any choice of his would probably end in him being wolf food anyway.

And call him crazy, but he’d really like to avoid that.

He finds that he isn’t particularly hungry when all is said and done, but he does pour himself a cup of coffee. He opts for black today, feeling suddenly claustrophobic and in dire need of some outdoor air. He knows that the mountainside will be good for his lungs, and for that much-needed sense of openness, now that he’s feeling so caged here. He sets the mug down to slip on his coat and slippers over his socks and pajamas, draping his scarf over his shoulders before grabbing his drink and slipping through the front door to the porch. There’s a small, snow-capped rocking chair on the porch that he’d like to make use of. The morning cold is a relief against his stress-heated skin. It feels nice to be just slightly more connected with nature than he’d usually find himself back home, and as he brushes the powder from the swing, as he gazes out through the glare of the sun sparkling against an endless sheet of white against the ground, he realizes that he’s stepped in something. And that something is soft and warm enough that it sizzles in the ice beneath his feet.

He sits, he lifts his foot. His stomach rolls when he realizes that he’s dragged a sizable pile of animal droppings from the welcome mat to his seat here. And it definitely doesn’t smell nearly as fresh or piney as he was hoping to experience during this fleeting moment of zen.

He groans, long and loud and low. He drops himself back against the back of the swing, resting his coffee against the armrest. He breathes in and out, trying so desperately not to lose his final shred of sanity, grimacing at the feeling of his soiled foot pressing into the ground, where he can feel every nasty piece of the mess shoved into the creased of his slipper soles. This is just what he needed, just great. After everything is said and done, after how terribly sick to death he’s been over this wolf situation, he can’t even enjoy his morning coffee without something else terrible happening. He decides that he hates nature. He never wants to leave the city again. He loves these slippers, and he knows that cleaning them is going to be disgusting. And that Lance and Pidge will probably laugh at his misfortune. They’ll probably think that all of this is especially hilarious since it isn’t happening to them.

But it feels like adding salt to the wound. Because he realizes that a creature that creates this big of poops is probably no small fry itself. And he knows, when he really thinks about it, that said giant, surely dangerous creature had to be close enough to the front door to leave it there in the first place. It’s a sobering thought. It immediately extinguishes all anger and annoyance, all stress and upset and unhappiness and replaces it with fear. With anxiety. With the realization that danger must have been even closer during the night than he’d anticipated—and considering how fresh that mess feels on the bottom of his slipper, it couldn’t have been standing on the porch very long ago. More than likely, it was sniffing around well after the sun had already risen.

This is the realization that compels him to flee back into the cabin. He’s in such a hurry that he doesn’t even remember to bring his mug. He kicks off his dirtied slippers before he even steps through the door, leaving them outside next to the sullied doormat, not worried about them in the least anymore, not when it’s very likely that whatever creature planted that landmine for him to find is probably still close by. They’re ruined anyway. The wolf can have them, for all he cares. He locks even the deadbolt, presses his back against the door and takes a long, shaking breath. Pidge and Lance don’t notice him at first. They’re debating some television show or book or movie, heated and animated as they argue about a premise or character motivation that neither of them can agree on. But as Hunk catches his breath, as he thinks about the limited amount of self-defense and martial arts that he learned as a kid and wonders how they’d stack up against a wild animal, Lance’s gaze finds him, and the two of them go quiet as they watch him unravel.

“Hunk, uh… buddy? Everything good?”

It takes him a moment to find his voice.

“The poop,” he says, clipped and horrified, “The poop on the porch was fresh, Lance! That wolf was standing right on the welcome mat! He was trying to get into the house!”

He has to admit, it sounds a lot more insane when he says it out loud. He’s never considered that he might have a phobia of large, dangerous and bloodthirsty animals until now. He’d always thought that the average person must have been equally afraid of being maimed and eaten alive as he was. But neither Lance nor Pidge seem concerned about that more than they’re concerned about him. Both of them seem wholly unaffected by the implications of wolf poop surrounding their easiest exit.

Lance pushes himself up from the table, making his way across the kitchen, then the living room, before reaching a hand out to place it gently on Hunk’s shoulder, leading him over to the couch. He slings a blanket over Hunk’s shoulders once he gets him there, patting him gently on the back before rising again.

“Dude, seriously, it’ll be okay, alright? Look—uh—I’ll call the groundskeeper now. I’ll talk to him about it. I’m sure it’s fine.”

He does just that, to his credit, a lot faster than Hunk would imagine that he might if someone else were acting completely needlessly paranoid about something that he didn’t think was a very big deal. He realizes that Lance must be used to all of this, and Pidge isn’t exactly the type of person to express her fears even if she’s feeling them. He knows that to the two of them, he probably seems like a drama queen, but he hopes that they understand how ill-equipped he is to handle this. He isn’t used to the mountains or the forest. He’s never left their hometown before. The scariest thing that he’s ever lived through was forgetting to study for a test, or thinking that his cat ran away from home. Monsters and man-eating creatures, to Hunk, have always been a thing of fiction before he’d considered this vacation. They’ve never been a pertinent issue in his life, and he’s never been forced to evaluate exactly how he might react in the face of them. And he’s panicking now. He’s letting even himself down terribly.

But he’s thankful, at least, that Lance has chosen to be considerate. And that Pidge isn’t giving him a hard time even as she shoves away from the table and sits down next to him, offering him her quiet company as his sole source of comfort as she fiddles with a game on her phone.

He can hear Lance bickering with someone from the other room. He seems indignant suddenly, as though he’s only breaths away from starting an argument. Lance isn’t usually such a hothead, and he definitely isn’t the kind of person to make enemies when he can make friends instead. So Hunk is curious, nosy as he tries to tune out the humming of the fridge and the churning of old pipes in the walls, focusing only on the muffled words that Lance is squawking pointedly at the person on the other line.

“Can you just check?!” He blurts, obviously winded and obviously frazzled, “God, okay, I know! But you’re more familiar with this place! Don’t be an asshole, okay?! I’ll—I’ll call my parents and have them send you some extra money or something—wh-what?! No! I’m—I’m not bribing you, asshole! I’m just asking you to do one stupid thing for us, is that too much to ask?!”

Hunk flinches as Lance slams the phone back into the receiver. He sucks in a shallow breath, threading his fingers through his hair. He feels guilty suddenly, for making Lance talk to a person who clearly doesn’t like him. He knows that Lance is already doing both him and Pidge a huge favor by hosting them here. And he understands that they wouldn’t even be having this problem right now if he hadn’t discovered a new, unexpected, and humiliating, debilitating fear of his. No matter how reasonable he still can’t help but feel that being terrified of being mauled by a wolf might be, he has to admit that begging Lance to contact the pissy groundskeeper might have taken things from perfectly normal level to something far more excessive and pathetic.

But he knows that he can’t change things now, anyway, and Lance doesn’t look nearly as aggravated as he’d sounded on the phone when he enters the room again. Hunk raises both eyebrows at him, all of the questions and apologies that he wishes that he could say at once tangled in his throat. Lance shrugs though, cutting him off, before loping across the small expanse of the room and draping himself over both of their laps. Pidge complains loudly, shoving weakly at Lance’s side without nearly enough strength to push him off. And Lance, in turn, swats her hands away, the back of his head heavy against Hunk’s thighs as he opens his eyes to peer up at him.

“I hate that guy,” he says, “He accused me of trying to bribe him after telling me that we were stupid for thinking that we saw a wolf. He said that it was probably just a really big dog.”

Hunk immediately decides that he doesn’t like that guy very much either. He knows what he saw, and it was definitely anything but a “big dog”. And he knows Lance, he knows Lance’s parents. He doubts that any of them would bribe anyone, and it’s such a stupid accusation anyway! If by bribing, the guy means offering money to do something that should reasonably be part of his job anyway, then basically every business in the United States is guilty of the same thing!

His indignance must be evident in his expression because Lance laughs, pushing himself up and winding his body around. He’s lying with his belly down on them now, which Pidge doesn’t seem to think is much better. But he doesn’t make an effort to move away from them aside from that, and after a moment of quiet, he says finally, “He said that he’ll check it out though. My parents always used to say that _‘you have to talk to him in a certain way’_ but I’ve never been very good at it. Every time I see him, we always get into a fight, but he’s impossible. I knew from the moment that I asked that he was gonna do it anyway, but he just had to give me a hard time first.”

“He sounds like he’s just trying to get a rise out of you. And I mean, if we’re being honest, it’s pretty fun, so I can’t blame him.”

Lance makes a lazy attempt at kneeing Pidge after she speaks, grimacing at her and whining that he’s been nothing but respectful and polite to the guy. It’s not his fault that the groundskeeper can’t tell what a nice person he is. It’s his loss, anyway.

This earns him a snort from Pidge, and the two of them bicker once again. But Hunk can’t help but feel as though there’s something missing here. He can’t help but think that someone adamantly denying the presence of wolves in the wooded mountains is almost negligible to a more sinister degree. He can’t help but liken it mentally to a lifeguard denying the dangers of drowning, or a fireman refusing to admit that fire actually kills people. His previous discomfort with the presence of a groundskeeper in some blind direction of the forest is suddenly exacerbated by this thought. The idea that perhaps it’s some kind of conspiracy, some kind of cult, and the three of them might have unwittingly stumbled upon their own end here—as the sacrifices to some ancient Pagan god. Or a wendigo that this groundskeeper has become in their absence, or the hard bones that might dull the edge of his ax, the blood that might stain the snow scarlet when he finally decides to sneak up here and chop them all into a thousand tiny, wolf-kibble sized pieces.

He’s aware of the existence of his own red herring argument. Some backward hick dismissing the eye-witness accounts of a few college-aged city kids shouldn’t be anything new. Surely, he probably thinks that they were partying in here, unsupervised, too hard. Or that Hunk might have mistaken a shadow of some branches for something moving outside. Or that maybe they made the whole thing up just to make themselves more afraid. He knows Lance, and he knows that Lance often takes jokes just a little bit too far. And if the groundskeeper dislikes Lance for any reason, it’s realistically probably that one. Hunk can’t say that he’d blame a person for not falling immediately in love with Lance’s sometimes excessive theatrics. He can easily imagine the number of times that Lance might have called him over to the cabin for one mundane reason or another, and as much as he loves them to death, the rest of Lance’s family isn’t much different.

Suddenly, he feels a little guilty for jumping to conclusions. The groundskeeper might just be tired, he’s probably overworked. He sure cleaned up the cabin very nicely for them, but he was probably well aware of the fact that his job would only get harder when Lance actually arrived. It’s almost laughable, thinking of the poor guy probably dreading their vacation here. And he does feel bad about being such a nuisance, but for once, maybe, this is actually a valid reason to get him involved.

He knows that he’s overthinking this. He knows that it probably isn’t that big of a deal in the end.

And he resigns himself to putting his fate in a stranger’s hands, and concentrating, instead, on having a good time here for Lance, just like he’d originally promised himself that he would.

 

* * *

 

The next night, Hunk can’t sleep.

He chalks it up to anxiety, to the jittery nervousness that comes along with knowing that someone, surely, is outside tonight searching for the supposed wolf that he witnessed loping around in the yard just last night. He feels guilty, albeit a little relieved, that the groundskeeper is being forced to stay awake maybe later than usual just to poke around in search of it, and frankly, he doesn’t even know what the guy is legally allowed to do with a wolf if he actually stumbles across it. Are wolves considered protected wildlife? Is it different if it’s been terrorizing the people who pay your checks? Does standing in the dark and watching Hunk through the window even count as terrorizing? He isn’t sure. He doesn’t know if the groundskeeper even cares if it’s legal or not, or even if the guy was actually concerned enough about their safety or comfort to wander around in the woods in the cold dark. He’s overwhelmed with the urge to peer out of the windows. He wants to keep an eye on things, even though Lance and Pidge don’t seem particularly worried. Maybe especially because of that. Maybe there’s a part of him that feels as though neither of them is giving this the respect and attention that it deserves.

It’s nearly two in the morning when he finally accepts that he isn’t going to sleep until he looks outside. And he doesn’t want Lance to wake up and witness him peering out of their shared bedroom window, so he resigns himself to going back downstairs. He remembers seeing a broom in the kitchen closet, and that’s the best weapon that he can think of right now—long range, reasonably sturdy. Maybe not enough to actually kill a beast of that size if it wanted to hurt him, but definitely something that might give him the chance to scare it and run away.

That is if it somehow had the ability to even come inside of the house, which seems to be the last of his considerations as he climbs quietly and carefully down the bunk bed ladder and tiptoes across the room. Pidge is snoring loudly again tonight, and Lance is rolled over with a second pillow shoved over his face. The moonlight outside is filtering through the crack of the curtains, and it’s cold. He’s shivering already. He wonders if the fire downstairs has gone out.

The fireplace, when he makes it to the bottom of the stairs, is expectantly dark. He doesn’t know if it would be too noisy to start a new one, or even if he’d remember how just from watching Lance stoke the flames earlier. Neither of the others seem to notice it, the lack of warmth definitely hasn’t woken them up, so maybe he’ll just wait until tomorrow. Maybe he should just pretend in the morning that he slept just fine, if only so he doesn’t worry them. Maybe he needs to just drop this whole wolf thing when he’s talking to them from now on, after worrying them so much today. Even if he loses sleep over it, there’s no good reason to keep making his own childish and paranoid delusions their problem, when they’ve both come out here to relax during winter break.

Through the narrow window on the front door, he can barely make out the yard through the porch light blaring overhead. He’s just as blind as he had been last night, and this attempt proves to be equally as fruitless in terms of remedying his fear. But he looks anyway, just in case he might be able to make out the dark, hefty outline of that wolf leaving another “present” for him on the welcome mat. That still makes him angry. He still can’t read it as anything but a vicious, well-planned attack orchestrated for the sole reason of letting him know that, yes, the wolf saw him, and yes, it was definitely willing to get that close just to send a message.

He pushes out a long breath, steeling himself before making the short trip through the living room into the kitchen. It’s too dark to make out any shapes of the furniture through the shadows, but he’s memorized their placement well enough that he knows when to stick out his hands, when to allow his fingers to bump against their edges so he doesn’t accidentally run into them. This moment strings out as though in slow motion. He can hear the pounding of his pulse through his skull like the slow snares of a drum. He can imagine that wolf standing closer tonight than it did last night, watching him, waiting, sending so many signs for the group of them to get the Hell out of here that Lance and Pidge won’t take seriously until it’s too late. Hunk wasn’t cut out for the wilderness, he knows. He has a lot of trouble understanding that animals don’t have the sentience required to put out hits on anyone, or to plot revenge, or to seek out a group and terrorize only one person before inevitably murdering all of them. Wolves, he reassures himself in a brief moment of clarity, can’t even open doors.

But when he looks outside, when he presses his palms to the glass and shoves his face so close to the window to peer outside that his nose bumps against it, he can see the dark shadow of a shape moving around in the trees. It doesn’t stop to look at him. It doesn’t move forward into the puddle of light for what feels like a very long time. But he can sense it crawling out there. He can see the discontent in the otherwise solid wall of black, and he knows that something is out there. It’s big, and it’s dangerous, and the groundskeeper isn’t here to take care of it.

He’s scared still. He’s shaking terribly. He almost yells out, almost calls Lance or Pidge or anyone to come to help him, but then it’s moving closer, it’s fast and wobbly and it’s coming nearer and nearer, until—

He almost curses. He bumps his forehead against the window with a loud, resonate crack of glass to skull.

A doe pads out into the moonlight, nosing through the freshly fallen snow in search of grass or any food that another animal might have buried there. Its long neck bends downward, its thin legs sprouted out of the thick, tall bales of white. It seems to sense that it’s being watched, because when Hunk moves just a little, its head shoots up again, and it’s barreling off into the indecipherably black throngs of trees. He wonders if he could have mistaken a deer that size for a wolf in his exhaustion last night. He wonders if it was possible that he just dreamed the whole thing up.

He watches for a little while longer, but the wolf never reveals itself. And to his dismay, he doesn’t see a single shape in those shadows that could be human either.

The sun rises before he manages to drag himself back upstairs and fall asleep. As though he has any idea what unraveled last night, this time, Lance doesn’t wake him up until well after lunch time, and only to tell him that he’s bringing Pidge down to the market at the mountain’s base to buy a new charger for her phone.

He asks if Hunk wants anything, and Hunk, too tired and frazzled with a head full of wolves chasing deer through a murky night in his dreams, tells him that some strong coffee would be better than anything else.

And then, he goes back to sleep.

 

* * *

 

Lance is in the bathroom when Hunk wakes up in the evening. Pidge is in the living room, having hooked up the video game system that she brought with her to the television, on which she plays a game that Hunk can’t put a name to from the limited amount of gameplay that he witnesses as he passes by. His attention is diverted instead to the sound of running bath water, to the sound of Lance cursing and fussing with something through the open door.

When Hunk makes his way in that direction, ducking through the threshold and spotting Lance’s turned back and slack, shaking shoulders hunched over the bathtub, he isn’t sure what he’s expecting to discover. He can’t say that he’d be particularly surprised to find blood swirling around the drain of the tub, to learn that Lance had been caught in the tracks of that terrible monster outside and lost a limb defending himself and Pidge, but Pidge doesn’t seem too worried about it. She doesn’t make an effort to call out to him or explain, or to fret to him about Lance’s showdown with a ferocious forest creature. And when he does finally find the courage to peek around Lance’s back, he’s relieved and confused to see that Lance is cleaning what appears to be thick globs of mud from the soles of his boots.

Lance jerks just a little when he notices that he’s not alone in here. And he doesn’t smile in greeting once he recognizes Hunk’s tired face. Instead, his brows seem to fold downward, and the stiff line of his mouth sets only firmer.

“Hey buddy,” he says flatly, exasperated, “Your movie monster shit on the front porch again.”

Hunk immediately recoils, covering his nose and mouth with his hand.

“You’re cleaning that off in the _tub_ ?! Where we _bathe_?!”

Lance shoots him a somehow even more sour look.

“Where else am I supposed to clean it, in the _kitchen sink_?”

Hunk sighs, easing off. Lance has a point, sure, and it’s not like there isn’t bleach under the sink that they could use to disinfect the tub. He watches Lance for another minute in silence, as Lance uses what appears to be a small twig that he grabbed from outside to pry the more stubborn clumps out of the grooves. He finishes one of the boots soon after, setting it on its side on a dirty towel that he’s rolled out on the floor, before grabbing the other boot and beginning the tedious work of de-pooing it as well.

“Did you call the groundskeeper again?”

Lance doesn’t respond for a moment, concentrating instead on the task at hand. He’s pursing his lips in disgust. Even as a person who’s more experienced with living in the wilderness than Hunk is, he’s still just a little bit too prim for this sort of thing, Hunk knows. And he also knows that Lance will probably be complaining about what this has done to his carefully manicured nails for the rest of their vacation.

“I did,” Lance says finally, “He told me that he looked around last night and didn’t find anything. And I asked him when he looked, because that asshole wolf or whatever definitely has it out for us. Then he laughed, of course, because he’s a big jerk. And I told him that he can come and clean the poop off the porch if he thinks this is so funny, _at which point_ , he hung up on me…”

Hunk can’t help but laugh, leaning far enough back that he can rest his weight on his elbows against the sink. He watches Lance work for a moment more, chewing on the inside of his cheek as he tips his head back to stare lazily at the ceiling.

“Do you think the groundskeeper could be a werewolf?”

And then Lance laughs, because he thinks that Hunk is joking. He says that he’s gruff enough, sure, and that his general dislike of Lance would surely explain the vindictive placement of the poop right on the welcome mat.

But he doesn’t take it seriously, and Hunk, embarrassed, chooses to allow him to keep believing that it was a joke.

But he knows that he’s onto something.

He knows that, at the center of this whole dangerous conspiracy, there can be no one responsible but that mysterious groundskeeper.

 

* * *

 

It isn’t until the early morning hours of the next day that Hunk finally spots the wolf again.

It’s purely by chance, earlier in the day than he’d usually find himself awake, and well before either Pidge or Lance have risen for breakfast. He figures that his sleep cycle has been disrupted by all of the nights that he’s woken up and checked outside. It’s only five in the morning, and the sun is barely beginning to skim the cage of trees around them. He’s slipped downstairs to make himself a cup of coffee before brushing his teeth and taking a shower, and idly, as though by pure muscle memory alone, he catches himself craning his neck to peer through the slatted window on the front door, just in case.

And he sees it—a large, hulking black figure. He sees it with its snide face pointed upward, looking blindly at the roof as it squats down to make a mess on the porch again.

He doesn’t know why he reacts how he reacts. He’d never taken himself for a warrior by any means, or a person who chooses fight over flight or freeze, especially considering everything that he’s learned about himself since he settled in here. But, when push comes to shove, when he finds himself staring so close at the creature that’s terrorized him over the span of three days, and he witnesses it desecrating their front porch once again, he sees red. He sprints into the kitchen and grabs the broom, and he bursts out onto the porch with such force that the door slams against the wall, cracking loudly and echoing through the gully of their cabin between the trees as it damages the siding. The wolf turns and sends him the most terrified, wide-eyed expression that he’s ever seen an animal make. He takes a swing it at, guiltily careful not to hit it, but to only scare it away instead. The bristles slam against the porch, and the wolf immediately lunges away, yelping and shaking and clumsy with fright as it stumbles through the snow.

But it’s not good enough to _just_ scare it away from the porch, Hunk thinks. He wants it to know that it can’t be in this yard, it has to stop terrorizing them. This cabin isn’t a safe haven for it, and if it ever wanders over here again, there will be Hell to pay, in the form of a tired man with bad morning breath thrashing at it with a bristled, wooden-handled weapon.

So he charges after it, swinging and yelling all the way. He’s thankful, in the back of his mind, that he’d finally cleaned his slippers after Lance was done with his boots, and that they were dry enough this morning for him to slip on before he peeked through the window in the first place. He’s still cold, but less so than he would have been. And having shoes, at least, gives him the ability to chase the wolf through the snow without injuring himself. And he takes advantage of this eagerly, following it from the clearing into the thick wall of trees, around corners and through leafless bushes, through a winding path that he’s too angry and hopped up on adrenaline to realize that he’ll never remember once his thoughts finally clear.

But right now, he only cares about scaring it away.

Right now, this monster is at his mercy, and he’ll be damned if he lets it get away without teaching it an important lesson about manners.

He barely registers the fact that there’s a smaller cabin growing nearer through the woods. He doesn’t connect the dots until he sees another person step out through the front door, slowly and confused, as though they’ve been drawn out by the throaty battle cries and the wolf’s frightened yelping.

The wolf lunges up the stairs towards that person, and Hunk’s blood runs cold. He dithers then, falling to a horrified stop, as he waits for the monster to tear its teeth into human flesh, for the handsome, dark-haired man who is now staring at him as though he’s lost his mind, to fall, screaming to the ground as he’s torn to shreds.

But none of that happens. The wolf tucks itself behind the man’s pajama pants-clad legs, the hulking mass of it barely concealed behind him. And the man reaches back to rest a hand on it, as though to reassure it that it’s safe.

And then he turns to Hunk, yelling out in a voice so demanding and booming that Hunk feels as though he’s being reprimanded by God himself,

“What the Hell do you think you’re doing?”

It’s the last thing that Hunk would have expected to hear right now. His mind is having a lot of trouble finding its way to this point, from the last point that he was coherent. Things are swiftly taking a sharp turn into surreal territory, and he flounders, his tongue feeling fat and rubbery in his mouth. Suddenly shivering, suddenly colder and more embarrassed than he’s ever been in his life, and he still has no idea what in the world is going on here.

“Are you with Lance, up at the McClain cabin? Are you the one who keeps bitching about my dog?”

Well, Hunk thinks more than he’s coherent enough to articulate, first of all, that _thing_ currently blubbering behind him is absolutely, one-hundred-percent _not_ a dog. It’s huge! Its teeth are the size of butter knives! Its creepy, beady little eyes are far too feral and cunning to be the dopey, loving eyes of the average house pet. Hunk sputters, somehow managing to point an accusatory finger in the man’s direction, who, regretfully, he’s just now coming down from his adrenaline high enough to recognize as somehow the most stunningly attractive person who he’s ever had the fortune to witness in the flesh. His long, messy hair curls around his shoulders. It’s so dark that it stands stark against the pristine white of the snow. His eyes, even from here, are framed beautifully by light, ivory skin. Even the deep scar striped over his jaw is handsome, somehow. He seems as though he’s been crafted perfectly, as though unreal in the way that he moves, that he speaks, that he’s staring at Hunk as though he’s just a few steps away from lunging over the railing of the porch and strangling him.

“Th-that’s _not_ a dog,” Hunk finally manages to blurt out, “I-it’s been pooping on our porch since we got here!”

The man raises an eyebrow, offering the wolf behind him a few more gentle pats before taking a step closer to the railing. He leans forward, resting his elbows against it and watching as Hunk shivers. He seems unusually unaffected by all of this, if not even just a little annoyed by it. And Hunk suddenly understands exactly who he’s talking to, where he is, and why Lance always seems to have so much trouble with the groundskeeper when he tries to call him.

“Y-you’re the guy who takes care of Lance’s cabin, aren’t you? Y-you knew about that wolf and you covered it up! I knew it! I knew you were in on this the whole time!”

The man rolls his eyes, sucking in a long breath before turning halfway as though to study his own front door. When he turns back around, he’s looking at Hunk carefully, calculating exactly how much time it might take for him to freeze to death outside now that the adrenaline from his previous outburst has finally ebbed away.

“It’s Keith,” he says simply, “And it’s not a wolf. It’s a dog. Why don’t you come inside and warm up and I’ll call those friends of yours to come get you?”

Hunk almost refuses, almost rejects this “Keith’s” offers on the grounds that he’s clearly working with the bad guy here, but then another shiver crawls up his spine. His ankles feel numb where the snow is seeping through the edges of his pajama pants, and his slippers, freshly clean, are caked in so much mud and frigid slush that he isn’t sure if there’s any saving them at this point. He wraps his arms around himself, glancing around the clearing where he’s ended up, realizing that he couldn’t find his way back from here if he tried. He knows that Lance is far more familiar with these woods anyway. He could venture through here and maybe even bring Hunk some appropriate clothes. But he’ll have to hope that Lance is even awake enough to answer the phone and that he won’t have to spend more time alone in a small cabin with this could-be serial killer and his poop-happy wolf until help finally gets here.

But he relents, because it’s cold and he’s barely dressed, and Keith is beautiful. And Hunk trusts him, even though he shouldn’t, because he can’t deny that he’d like to keep looking at him for just a little while longer. He’s standoffish, and he seems completely unconcerned with all of the reasons why his giant “dog” might scare someone. He doesn’t seem to feel even remotely guilty about the fact that it’s gotten to this point, that he’s soured this once hopeful vacation purely because he neglected to inform Lance that his pet is clearly a Lovecraftian-level concoction of nightmares, hellbent on scaring unassuming college kids to death. But he’s pretty. And it’s nice that he holds open the door for Hunk so Hunk can shuffle inside first. He doesn’t even seem angry or perturbed at all when Hunk accidentally tracks a frothy mixture of snow and mud through the threshold, before he regains enough feeling in his feet to kick off his slippers and shake the residue from his pant legs.

He leads Hunk then from the front door to the kitchen, where Hunk can already smell the coffee gurgling in the pot. He breathes in, ignoring the way that his stomach growls at the mere implication of breakfast. He’s been eating as well as he’s been sleeping lately. He barely managed to down his dinner last night, and it’s already late enough in the morning that he knows that he’s skipped breakfast. He realizes with a start that he must have been chasing that wolf through the woods for a decent chunk of time. Something that felt momentary was long enough for the sun to rise, for the warmth of the it to melt the ice from the trees. He feels suddenly as though he could use a nap, but he knows better than to even ask. He’d look crazy, he knows, and he also knows that he’d be far too nervous to fall asleep here, even if Keith had a guest room to offer. He watches the wolf as it winds through the cramped space of the kitchen, bumping its nose against Keith’s side as he fiddles with a can and the opener on the counter. Hunk can’t put words to how unusual it is to watch Keith, then, empty the contents of the can into a red plastic bowl with the name “Kosmo” scrawled over it in messy, faded permanent marker. It’s weirder to watch him pet the dog as it eats, domestic enough that it only reinforces Keith’s earlier claim that this hulking animal is, in fact, his pet.

He washes his hands after, drying them on a threadbare towel hanging from the oven. He turns to Hunk, looking him up and down, and he says, slowly, but still surprising enough that Hunk is too dumb to respond for a few seconds too long, “Do you want breakfast? You drink coffee?”

Hunk fumbles for a moment, sliding clumsily into a pulled-out chair at the kitchen table, wringing his hands together as he looks from Keith’s handsome face to the dog still lapping noisily at its bowl. He isn’t sure if he feels calm enough to eat yet, if he can get over his newfound discomfort at the way that these events have unfolded long enough to actually get down any breakfast that Keith could offer him. On one hand, he’s shockingly okay with how handsome and strangely charming of a character the groundskeeper has ended up being. Yesterday, had anyone warned him that his suspicions about the guy wouldn’t be nearly enough to stop the feelings of attraction that are making him feel entirely too comfortable sitting here in this sinister stranger’s kitchen, he might not have believed them. But on the other, he can’t forget, no matter how tempting it might be, that this same person knowingly allowed his pet to continue terrorizing them, and brushed off even Lance’s more frantic pleas to help out, even though all that it might have taken to calm them down was to just own up to the fact that his dog is clearly wolfish, and that he’s obviously been letting it out late at night without supervising it.

But Hunk’s need to be polite overcomes his urge to hold this grudge and to make that grudge apparent to everyone in the room. He nods once, quick and jerky, and turns his eyes down to his folded hands on the table.

“Breakfast and coffee would be great, thanks.”

His voice is so small and unsure that it’s barely there at all.

But he can see Keith turn again, back to the counter as he starts to make the food. He doesn’t look directly at Keith, doesn’t allow his eyes to linger on him for too long, but instead focuses his attention on his hands as he tries to piece together everything that has happened over these last few days. It seems to be such a blatant mistake, for Keith to neglect to inform Lance that this “Kosmo” dog is, in fact, the supposed wolf that Hunk has been so afraid of. That would have solved everything in one fell swoop, Hunk wouldn’t have stayed up for hours on guard, and Kosmo wouldn’t have inevitably found himself on the receiving end of a weaponized broom as he charged desperately towards the safety of his owner’s house.

So Hunk doesn’t get it. He doesn’t feel like a guy who Lance has begrudgingly admitted is a good and trustworthy worker would make a point of omitting such an important piece of information when it would have so clearly solved all of his problems. And Hunk can’t help himself when he blurts out these questions, warm enough by now that his cheeks feel as though they’ve caught fire when Keith turns around to look at him.

“Why did you keep this secret—you know, this dog thing? We thought we were being hunted or something. Lance was considering calling the forest ranger to have them relocate it.”

Keith’s eyes are hard as he watches Hunk. His face, Hunk notes, has also taken some color. He clears his throat, flipping around sharply and continuing to shuffle the eggs that he’s cracked in their pan over the lighted stove. He’s quiet for a long moment before he responds.

“I told your friend that it was probably just my dog and he said that I was stupid if I thought that you guys couldn’t tell the difference between that and a wolf. He doesn’t like me very much, so he didn’t listen. Kosmo’s good at guarding the woods around that place. He’s caught teenagers trying to sneak up there in the past. He likes sleeping in the living room when I go over there to clean, so I think he’s mad at you guys for hogging his favorite nap spot—which… probably explains the poop. I’m… sorry about that one. I can come clean it up. He’s still pretty young and potty training is hard when he usually gets to go anywhere in the woods that he wants.”

Hunk can’t deny that it sounds like Lance to get defensive about something like that. But he also can’t deny that maybe Keith could have tried harder to convince him that his dog really does look like a wolf from far away. Close up, as it bumps its nose against Keith’s side to beg for the breakfast that he’s making, Hunk belatedly recognizes that it’s just a little domestic and well-behaved to be feral. And it’s so timid now, lovingly gazing up at its owner in a desperate attempt to be cute enough to earn itself a piece of the bacon that Keith is tugging from the plastic to toss in with the eggs.

“Is he a hybrid? He looks pretty wolfish.”

Keith doesn’t look at Hunk, but he does finally relent to Kosmo, dangling a raw slice of bacon in front of his face until he leans up to grab it.

“I don’t know what he is,” Keith says idly, distantly, “Someone dumped him on the side of the road when he was still a puppy. I found him when I was coming back with groceries, and… he’s lucky that the wolves didn’t get him. Or the eagles or coyotes. It’s dangerous out there alone when you’re small.”

Hunk watches Kosmo as he devours the bacon in what seems to be one big gulp. He licks his lips, his eyes immediately fixed on Keith’s hands as they place a few more pieces on the skillet. He’s standing so close to Keith that Keith’s legs seem lost in the thick fluff of his fur. And he’s watching him dutifully, ignoring Hunk entirely. He isn’t interested in eating humans, as Hunk might have thought just a day ago. But he does seem absolutely enamored with Keith.

And Hunk can’t help but swoon a little. Despite his own nervousness about animals, he’s completely aware of the fact that a soft spot for helpless puppies is an undeniably attractive personality trait, especially for a heartthrob like Keith.

He clears his throat, drumming his fingers against the table and forcing himself yet again to stop gazing so longingly in Keith’s direction. It’s hard to keep his eyes away from him for too long. The way that he moves, how he carries himself, how his evident muscles underneath his nightshirt shift beneath the fabric, Hunk knows that he’s smitten. He understands that attraction is a chemical reaction in the brain. He knows that it’s natural for a human to find themselves drawn physically to someone who they find aesthetically pleasing to look at. He isn’t surprised that he’s fallen victim to his body’s wants and needs, but he can’t help but feel—dramatically, childishly—that somehow this is different. There’s just something about Keith that makes all of this feel like more than just a passing bout of very human lust.

Maybe he’s just tired.

Maybe the adrenaline crash is making his thoughts confused. Making him, unfortunately, believe that love at first sight, or even that love itself, could ever be real just because one very beautiful person has invited him inside of their home for breakfast.

“S-so do you have wifi up here? Or like, uh… data? Like a cell phone connection or anything?”

Hunk is definitely well aware of that fact that his voice sounds squeaky, awkward, and unnatural as it sputters out through his lips. He doesn’t even have his own phone on his person, if he had the guts to ask Keith for his number, but maybe he could write it down. He definitely doesn’t have a reason to believe that Keith would even give him said number, or that he likes him more than he feels sorry for him, or at the very least considers that perhaps being nice to Hunk will reduce the risk of Hunk complaining to Lance, then Lance complaining to his parents.

“I don’t have any social media, if that’s why you’re asking,” Keith says, still not turning around to face Hunk, “Or dating apps. Or anything like that. This isn’t exactly the kind of area where hot singles are just miles away. Most of the locals are old and retired. You’re the first person that I’ve brought home, really… _ever_.”

Hunk’s cheeks feel so hot now that Keith could probably put the skillet over them and burn the eggs. He coughs loudly, pushing himself back and straighter in his seat, as though he’s really willing to make a run for it, if only to avoid the very real and very awkward conversation that he’s just forced both of them into. And perhaps, as well, the realization that even if Keith doesn’t exactly know that he wanted to get his number, he’s still in the general ballpark with what he just assumed.

“O-oh, well.” Hunk is having a lot of trouble connecting the part of his brain that speaks to the part of his brain that develops coherent thought. “I—I’m honored, then, uh… you have a really nice… house. And I bet if there were any hot singles in this area they’d be thrilled to come home with you.”

This time, Keith does turn to look at him, offering him a wry smile. He seems on the brink of laughter, holding the spatula that he’s using to flip the eggs and bacon straight out, as though for a moment, he’s become so amused by Hunk’s emotional downfall that he’s forgotten that he’s supposed to be cooking.

Hunk still finds it impossible to break his stare, because Keith is pretty like this, when he’s smiling, just as he’s never ceased being pretty since Hunk met him. His breaths are stalled and stilted, and his head feels light, and he’s determined that he must have really, actually died while chasing Kosmo through the woods earlier, because Keith’s following words do not sound like anything that has ever and will ever reasonably, realistically happen in Hunk’s long and miserable life.

“Well, you’re the first _‘hot single’_ I’ve seen around here, and you’re in my house, so I guess you’re right.”

He’s determined that he’s died and woken up in some alternate universe. It takes every ounce of his self-control not to thrust himself up from his seat and hunt down the nearest reflective object, just to be sure that he’s really still average, ordinary Hunk—the Hunk who no one has ever alluded to being anything even remotely similar to “hot”. He’d always thought that things like that never happened. Even someone like Lance, who he considers to be handsome enough, doesn’t have random, mysterious and attractive strangers telling him out of nowhere that they think that he’s cute. It’s just not a real thing, Hunk knows it. It’s straight out of fiction.

But he feels those words buzzing inside of him, warming him further and further until he feels as though he’s been engulfed by flame. Keith turns back to begin sliding their breakfast from the skillet to their plates, and he seems so devoid of embarrassment that it only furthers Hunk’s paranoid suspicion that he just hallucinated the whole thing. He seems completely unaware of just how surreal the words that just left his mouth have sounded to Hunk. And the casualness, the blitheness with which Keith announces that he’s attracted to Hunk, as though that should be the most common knowledge in the universe, just makes all of this feel weirder. And when Keith places a plate in front of him, pulling away for only a moment to pour their coffees and grab the cream and sugar, he doesn’t even stop to reassure Hunk that it was all a joke, this is actually real reality, and they definitely aren’t in some kind of wormhole where people say things that no one should ever or could ever say.

It isn’t until Keith asks him if the food looks okay that Hunk remembers that he’s starving and he really should eat.

And it’s good. It’s a simple meal, but Keith didn’t overcook the eggs, didn’t burn the bacon. It isn’t too greasy or limp. Hunk can appreciate a person who knows their way around the kitchen, and if Lance’s earlier admissions about Keith being handy were in any way correct, Hunk realizes with profound embarrassment that someone like Keith truly could be the perfect match for him. He feels insane for even pondering it, especially since they just met. But he can’t help but feel another rush of affection for the guy when Keith tears off another small piece of his bacon, sneaking it under the table to give to a still-begging Kosmo.

They eat in silence for a while, until Keith places his fork gently and quietly on the table next to his plate and bumps Kosmo’s nose with his hand as he rises to take the plate to the sink.

“Stop begging,” he says, “You already had like five pieces of bacon. You aren’t licking the grease too.”

Hunk finishes soon after, feeling fuller and more contentedly tired than he has in days. Keith grabs his plate as well, nodding silently as Hunk thanks him, but turning down his offer to at least dry the dishes as Keith rinses the residual egg and grease from the surface before scrubbing over them with a worn-out sponge.

“I’ll call your friends after I’m done. They’re probably worried about you, especially since all of you have been so freaked out about this wolf situation.”

There’s only the slightest hint of something that decidedly isn’t annoyance in his voice, and Hunk elects to read it as nothing short of amusement. He knows that Keith must think that they’re idiotic for stressing about this, especially after he attempted to explain to Lance that it wasn’t anything to be worried about. Hunk can’t help but wonder if there was a part of Keith that enjoyed talking to Lance on the phone, considering how rare it must be for him to talk to another person who isn’t the clerk at the grocery store of Lance’s parents calling once or twice during the year to check up on the state of their cabin. He wonders if Keith gets lonely, all by himself, or if Kosmo can somehow be enough company even though he can’t speak.

Before he can stop himself from asking, Hunk can hear his quivering voice breaking the silence, awkward and unpracticed and far too unconfident to be saying the judgmental words that he’s currently saying.

“Does it get lonely up here? By yourself? I mean, you’ve never considered moving closer to town, or… I don’t know, dating online or something?”

Long-distance doesn’t seem like it would be a bad idea, all things considered, and Hunk can’t imagine that anyone would turn down a pretty face like Keith’s. He gets a sense about him that he has a lot to say but he just doesn’t know how to say it. That he might open up gradually if given a text-based medium on which to express himself slowly and in a more calculated manner, instead of being expected to hit the right tone when speaking out loud. Keith, Hunk can tell, is rusty when it comes to communicating face-to-face or even over the phone. He wonders how long it’s been since the last time that Keith talked to someone as he’s talking to him now. He wonders if the most social interaction that he gets during the average week might be his infrequent trips down to the convenience store in town for supplies.

Keith doesn’t offer much of a reaction at first. He finishes washing Hunk’s plate after his own, placing it carefully in the drying rack before leaning sideways to pat Kosmo on the head. Then he turns, slowly, wiping his wet hands on the corners of his shirt, over his hips. He fixes Hunk with a hard, blank expression, his lips pulled flat and his eyes alight with an all-consuming fire that pins Hunk abruptly in place.

“You’re sure talking around what you really want to say,” he tells Hunk, “You’re trying to figure out if I’m happy to see you here, even though you were trespassing while trying to attack my dog. You feel bad, but you don’t want to sound like you’re at fault since your friend lied to you, but you also want me to like you.”

Hunk feels decidedly uncomfortable being read so easily, so he turns his gaze away. He looks to Kosmo, who isn’t looking anywhere but at Keith, as though he might be hiding another treat under his crossed arms that he’ll offer him any moment now.

Hunk clears his throat, drumming his fingers on the table. He feels just a little loopy now, a little lightheaded and barely coherent enough to focus all of his attention on how mortified he feels. He’s thankful for that, in a way, for the way that it acts as a buffer between his thoughts that might have raced if he were more awake, and whatever embarrassing thing he might say under better circumstances to defend himself.

Instead, “I’m sorry,” he says.

Instead, he offers Keith a small smile.

“You’re right, I do want you to like me.”

“Well, I do. And I am happy to see you. Even though you were trespassing and trying to hurt my dog.”

It’s an easily-recognizable joke, so Hunk laughs. He pushes himself back in his seat and rises to his feet. In this small cabin kitchen, there isn’t much room to move around. Between the table and the small landing where the stairs lead up, and another door that Hunk thinks might bring them into the living room, he doesn’t have a lot of space to stand without nearly knocking into Keith. He’s taller, by a small degree, but tall enough that Keith tips his head back to meet his eyes. Tall enough that he can easily imagine the way that his arms might fold around Keith and engulf him entirely.

Hunk clears his throat.

“S-so, the phone—”

“—Yeah, y-eah, it’s… in here.”

Hunk doesn’t think that he’s crazy when he senses that something is going on between the both of them. Keith has told him as much, quite clearly, but he’s still having a lot of trouble believing it. Love at first sight is unrealistic, he knows this. But he can’t deny the attraction.

He’s just never imagined that he’d be the kind of person that someone else could fall for at face value, especially under circumstances such as these.

He follows behind Keith through a narrow door into an equally narrow hall. It spills out into a living room fitted with aged furniture, just big enough that a loveseat and a couch can be crammed into the corners surrounding a small, bulbous, older model TV. There’s a dog bed tucked under the coffee table, which he notices had been sanded and polished recently, given the way that it shines. Everything in Keith’s house seems older, mismatched and pieced together as though thrifted, but altogether well taken care of. He realizes that Keith probably spends a lot of his time making sure that everything under his care is as well taken care of as he can possibly manage.

He has a lot of respect for a person like that, and it only adds to the feelings currently swelling in his chest. He knows that Keith is handy, he’s responsible, he’s somewhat motherly, and he can cook. He knows that Keith is fit and handsome, and that his skin looks so soft that it might be akin to running his fingers over velvet if he were ever brave enough to touch him. He knows that Keith smells clean, that he isn’t dirty even though no one could reasonably judge him for skipping a bath or two, living here all alone. And he’s decorated his small home in a way that makes it feel welcoming and warm. Behind the television and to the left a short distance, there’s a small fireplace currently crackling as though it’s just recently been refilled with fresh wood.

It smells oaky in here, like the breakfast that they just ate and the wood burning in the fireplace. Like outdoors has been brought in and combined with the human things that Keith fills his tiny world with. Keith hands him the receiver of an old, bulky phone. And he takes a moment to dial the number of Lance’s cabin before telling Hunk that it should be ringing.

Then he ducks under the cord, calling Kosmo over to him before slipping through the narrow hallway once again to give Hunk some space and privacy.

The phone rings three times before it picks up. Before Hunk can even get a word in, Lance’s winded voice is practically booming over the line. It crackles as his words reach near-inhuman octaves. In the background, he can barely hear Pidge yelling for Lance to calm down and use his adult, inside voice.

“K-Keith, you asshole! Hunk is gone! I think that wolf took him, man! I’m going to call the police—no, the wildlife marshal! I’m going to call the news and the FBI and I’m going to demand that they tear apart your shitty little cabin looking for him! I know you had a hand in this, you bastard! I-I’m not going to rest until—”

“Lance! Lance, it’s me, please! Calm down, man. I’m okay. I’m sorry, I—I chased that dog off of the porch this morning and… I didn’t have time to warn you guys before I left. I’m at Keith’s house now. It was a false alarm, I—I’m sorry. It really was just his dog.”

For a moment, there’s no response. Hunk knows that the line hasn’t disconnected because he can hear Pidge in the background asking what happened, before something rubs over the receiver and he can then hear Lance’s muffled voice whispering something to her, presumably with his palm over the speaker so Hunk can’t hear him. Then, there’s laughter—Pidge’s laughter and her mocking words that he can only recognize by tone alone. He knows that she’s probably teasing both of them for mistaking a house pet for a monster, but he’s determined that if she could just see Kosmo, even up close and begging for scraps, she’d undeniably understand how the mix-up could have happened.

After another moment, Lance speaks again.

“That’s good to hear, buddy. Is… is he being okay? I know he’s kind of an asshole, but—”

“He’s nice.” Hunk cuts him off as briefly and void of emotion as he can possibly muster up, given the rampant beating of his heart when he so much as thinks about the fact that he is, in fact, standing in the middle of a total heartthrob’s house, and said heartthrob has actually been very nice to him. “He made me breakfast.”

Lance pushes out a scoff through his teeth, which hisses over the line before he laughs in disbelief.

“Are you serious?” he asks, “I can barely get that guy to say hi to me, and he made you breakfast?”

Shortly after, Lance promises that he’ll arrive soon to lead Hunk back to their cabin. He makes a snide remark about how they might have been able to take the snowmobile if _someone_ would actually fix it, and while he doesn’t name any names, Hunk can’t stop himself for turning his gaze slowly to the hall that Keith passed through earlier, wondering if he might actually know how to do those repairs. Maybe he’ll bring it up later on, if there is a later on. If this isn’t just some fleeting interaction that will bug him for years to come, a “could be” that ended too quickly for him to ever discover if his many theories about love and relationships were false all along.

But once he hangs up, after Lance reassures him that he’ll be there within the next thirty minutes, he decides that he needs to tell Keith that he’ll be leaving soon. And to thank him, perhaps, for his unexpected hospitality, regardless of how they definitely could have gotten off on the wrong foot. From everything that Lance has said about Keith so far, Hunk wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d simply taken Kosmo inside and locked him out, leaving him to navigate the gnarled, snow-covered wilderness that he’d run blindly through to get here. But he’d let him inside, and instead of just calling Lance and having him come immediately, he’d fed Hunk and warmed him up, and offered him calm and heartfelt conversation that had finally put his mind at ease.

He’s a little bit emotional thinking about it, feeling like a baby bird picked up from the ground and placed gently back into its nest by caring human hands. And when he slips through the narrow hall once again and witnesses Keith, as a version of himself that he surely doesn’t expect for anyone else to see, Hunk’s heart swells so painfully with an overflow of affection that he has to steady himself against the doorframe.

Keith is crouched down just between the kitchen table and the sink. Kosmo licks his cheeks, and Keith smiles, laughing quietly, telling him what a good boy he is and burying his nimble fingers in the thick muzzle of hair around Kosmo’s neck. Kosmo’s tail is brushing back and forth as at speed so swift that it’s nothing but a dark, fluff-shaped blur. And when Keith spots him in the doorway, he doesn’t tear away as though he’s been caught in the act. His smile smoothes out somewhat, and he regains a little bit of color to his cheeks and stiffness to his shoulders, but he still pets Kosmo, and he doesn’t stop him from licking his face in return.

“Is he coming?”

Hunk nods once, slowly. He clears his throat and lifts a hand to scratch at the back of his neck. Keith rises only then, patting Kosmo on the head before ducking around the other side of the table and pulling open a nondescript closet door just a little ways away from the front door.

He tugs out a large and tall and thick coat—threadbare and faded, aged and oversized in a way that confuses Hunk for a moment before he remembers that Lance did, in fact, tell him that Keith’s father used to live in this cabin as well.

“I want this back,” Keith tells him, “But if you’re walking, you should stay warm. I don’t have any boots that will fit, but… at least you’ll only lose your feet.”

It’s another joke and Hunk can recognize that clearly, but Keith doesn’t smile and his voice doesn’t hitch up an octave as though to indicate anything but total seriousness. But Hunk makes an effort to offer Keith a small, awkward chuckle anyway, swallowing thickly before he draws himself around the table and nearer to Keith. He takes the coat from him, weighing it idly in his hands and feeling too uncomfortable and put on the spot to meet his eyes. It’s a nice-quality coat. It’s warm when he shrugs it over his shoulders and slides his arms into the holes. It’s a little bit broader than he is in some places but cinched tight in others. He can’t button it, but he knows that it will keep him protected well enough. And when he looks to Keith, when he takes in the hard look of his eyes and the thin line of his lips, the low pull of his brows and how absolutely focused he seems, hand still extended as though he’s thinking of reaching out and touching the fabric again, Hunk doesn’t even think before he tells him, “Thank you for… everything, Keith. I promise I’ll bring this back before we leave.”

Keith jerks back to attention and his cheeks grow only pinker. He nods too, quick and jerky, before shuffling out from between Hunk and the wall and making his way over to the kitchen counter.

Hunk watches him from behind, the way that his shoulders move as he pulls a pen and a notepad from one of the drawers. He watches as Keith scribbles something down before tearing the paper from the pad, folding it a few times before turning to face him.

He marches back towards Hunk with the finesse of a man who’s just remembered his own confidence. He shoves his hand deep into the coat pocket, eyes hard and hot and overwhelmingly beautiful as they look unflinchingly up at him.

“Call me before you do,” he says, “To pay me back for this, take me on a date, okay?”

In the distance, Hunk can hear Lance’s booming voice calling out his name. He can hear him bickering with Pidge as they draw nearer. His skin feels hot and his hands shake, and he’d known even the first night that he would die by the end of this trip. He’d known that something would happen to change his life here, to change him, and upon returning home, later on, nothing would ever be the same.

He can feel Keith’s note folded and sharp in his pocket when he shoves his hand inside. He can see a smile in Keith’s gorgeous, deep violet-flecked eyes even when his lips don’t curve to match it.

As Lance and Pidge draw nearer, Kosmo settles himself on the kitchen floor and yawns before curling into himself and dozing off. Hunk sputters an affirmation, Keith tells him not to forget.

And Hunk still isn’t sure if he believes in love or not—if it’s nothing but a chemical reaction, if it’s the stuff of fairytales, or if he’s simply not capable of feeling anything so extreme.

But Keith’s quick and soft peck on his cheek before he opens the door feels as though he’s been kissed by the sun. He feels invigorated and taller, stronger, warm enough that his toes barely sting in his wet slippers as he trudges home.

He doesn’t know if love is real, or if monsters really do lurk in the forests here. He doesn’t know why Lance and Keith don’t like each other, why Kosmo felt the need to poop on the doormat of all places, why the snowmobile doesn’t work, or why the grocery store in town won’t carry 2% milk.

But he knows that he wants to see Keith again, as many times as he can before they’re gone.

And maybe that’s enough, he thinks. Maybe that’s really all that he needs to know, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, Peach! And surprise, haha, I got you in the Heith Secret Santa!
> 
> I'm so sorry that this story derailed SO much from your more innocent prompts, but at the mention of Heith + Kosmo in winter, I couldn't help but envision this sort of... 101 Dalmations sort of scene, but... worse. But I really do hope that you enjoyed this! It was a blast writing for you (yet again)!
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! <3
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/mothisland), [tumblr](http://curionabang.tumblr.com), [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.io/flyingisland)


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